


and the bed where you lie is made up on your side

by darkofthemorning



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: (and death?), Coach Scott Moir, Dad!Scott, F/M, Ice Skating, Love, Partnership, Reflection, Self-Reflection, Where's Tessa?, life - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 14:31:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17469380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkofthemorning/pseuds/darkofthemorning
Summary: How do you summarize 36 years of beauty, intelligence, accomplishments, pride, laughter, darkness, pain, guilt, and heartbreak?How do you explain someone so complex in a way so simple?How do you describe the love of your life to people who will never understand?How do you stay strong for your children when you're still hurting nearly three years later?





	and the bed where you lie is made up on your side

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as my Creative Writing assignment about three hours ago. Now, as you can see, it isn't my assignment anymore and is instead the result of me writing while being way too emo over VM's career.  
> I couldn't decide if I wanted this to be Scott's or Tessa's story, but I ultimaely went with the former because I'm a sucker for Scott and kids:)

“Daddy, what Mommy was like?”

A simple question, asked by the 4-year-old sitting front of him, dark brown curls escaping her ponytail to frame her angular face, green eyes focused on the paper in front of her as she scribbles what she perceives as a masterpiece.

A simple question, asked absentmindedly by a child who would never understand the weight that those five words carry.

A seemingly simple question that is so difficult to answer.

Where does he even start?

 

He still remembers the day they met; it seems like it was yesterday, despite the fact that it was nearly 30 years ago.

It would have been 31 next month.

At just seven and nine years old, neither of them realized what was going on at the time. Quickly being thrown together by his aunt and mother, the two women fussed over how perfect their heights were and how they would balance each other out on the ice and how they would compliment each other so well and achieve great things.

He had no idea who the girl standing next to him was, and he could tell by the disgusted look on her face that she wanted this just as much as he did.

Yet neither of them fought back nor resisted against the two women.

Sometimes he wonders how different things would have been if he would have just skated away, or if she had spoken up.

He remembers their very first competition, when he screwed up some of the steps so bad but she didn’t seem to care. He had one partner before, but when he screwed up with her she left him right away, afraid that he’d only hold her back.

But this girl, she stayed.

That’s how he knew she would be here for good.

She was so patient with him, and even when he hated himself and would beat himself up for his mistakes, she would be there to comfort him, tell him that he was still worth everything to her no matter what. He loved that about her, that unconditional love she had for him for the entire duration of their partnership. He never thought he deserved it.

He was so thankful for her.

She was loyal to him. She always came back to him even when he was everything but kind to her. He supposes it was the same thing the other way around, how even when she hurt him he always came back around. They could never stand to leave each other, not when one of them was the only thing on the Earth that could keep the other grounded.

But it wasn’t always like that.

For nearly half of their career, they didn't quite know how to communicate, which caused so many of their difficulties. If only they would have learned to just talk to each other, they probably would have been so much stronger together. Because being mad at someone you spend nearly 80% of your days with is a nightmare, but somehow this was a common reality.

You would never be able to tell once they were on the ice.

But once they figured it out, everything changed, and for the better. He wished they would have done it sooner.

She adored learning, whether it be for school or new strategies or ways to improve herself or their partnership. She was like a little book of knowledge and knew almost everything about nearly anything, murmuring definitions during their practice sessions on ice or running up to him excitedly at the beginning of every day just to tell him about the newest fact she had read. And he still has no idea how she managed to obtain both an undergrad degree and an MBA during their career, but if anyone could have done it, he knows it would be her.

He loved her laugh, but not her little giggle that was reserved for media or fans or conferences. He loved her real, genuine, booming laugh that shook mountains and made flowers dance and sent chills up his spine. He loved the way her eyes crinkled and the way her nose would scrunch and how she’s throw her head back, and could never fully recover even minutes after the fact.

She was hilarious, more funny than she ever gave herself credit for. She was one of the only people who could make him laugh, but he never actually told her that.

He wishes he did.

She was always glowing, radiating positivity and smiles everywhere she went. Even on her darkest days, she always managed to present herself as confident. He never knew how she did it, but admired the amount of strength it took for her to get out of bed on the days she couldn’t take it anymore.

She was beautiful and complex and so overwhelming, but he loved all of that about her. She had always been naturally beautiful, even since she was a young girl. He never quite understood how it was possible for someone to be pretty their entire life without even trying, both internally and externally.

She loved her sleep, but it was a luxury that she could rarely enjoy when they were up most days at 5 AM and weren’t going to sleep until after midnight. She could never get up when her alarm sounded, and usually one of the coaches, her parents, and even he sometimes would have to go to her room and literally drag her out of bed.

There was no one she trusted more than him, and no one he trusted more than her. He knew all of her hardships and heartbreaks and worried and fears, and each one of these were just as much his as they were hers. He cried with her, he broke with her, he crumbled under the weight of everything right beside her. They were a single soul in two bodies.

He loved the clear-cut and glorious parts of her life, but he loved the jagged-edges and messy parts even more. He loved them because they all came together to compose his favourite human on the planet.

One of her most bittersweet qualities was how determined she was. When she had a goal, she was reaching it no matter what obstacles she was faced with.

She achieved so much in her life because of this, all of her sponsorships and endorsements and photoshoots and designing opportunities. She got a lot father than he did, he hated to admit, but he loved seeing her succeed and do everything she had always wanted to do, especially the year they retired. He regrets the way he spent most of that year, filling up that hole in him that skating once held with a girl he didn’t truly love.

She, on the other hand, thrived. He was so proud of her, and always has been, but was even more so in the years after their last Olympics in PyeongChang. She did all she ever wanted, everything she had dreamt of but skating always got in the way.

Proud was an understatement.

And she never gave up, not even when it got so fucking hard that she could barely even walk.

Her compartment syndrome was so bad, and he never understood why she of all people deserved to be cursed with such immense pain. A soul like hers deserved to be free of any ailments, so kind and generous and beautiful, yet it seemed like this was a cruel trick the universe was playing on her.

She insisted on training hard, despite the pain. She insisted on coming back after her first surgery, and even after her second. Where most athletes would have found the end of their careers, she found a reason to try even harder.

It worried him sometimes, hell, it fucking scared the shit out of him how hard she’d push herself. She would insist she was fine to their coaches, and they would buy it, but not him. They didn’t know her like he did; he could see through her bullshit, see the tears threatening to shoot from her eyes before they even reached the surface, could the barely audible whimpers of pain from across the room, could even feel the fire in his own shins as he watched her train. He wished she wasn’t so determined all the time, that she would realize her own limits and take a break for herself when she needed to. He wished she wouldn’t push herself so hard all the time.

No matter how much he talked to her, telling her to take it easy and relax and let herself heal, she never quite listened to him. Even when the conversations turned into yelling at 2 AM about it all being too much, too overwhelming for her, she refused to quit.

She was strong, God, was she ever strong, but he wished she would have taken more time for herself. To reflect and realize that she wasn’t okay, that she needed a break, that she couldn’t do it alone.

Maybe if she had, she would still be here.

 

“Daddy?”

The squeaky voice and gentle pokes to his broad shoulders coming from the 3-year-old boy sitting on his knee drew him back to the present, and he realizes he has no idea how long he's been in his thoughts for. Long enough, he notes, for his daughter to stop her doodling and avert her focus onto him, her brows furrowed in confusion.

He clears his throat loudly, shifting in the chair beneath him. His son giggles at the sudden movement and he can’t help but smile to himself; Patrick may have his honey-coloured eyes and pointy nose, but there’s no doubt in his mind that he inherited his mother’s giggle, one of his favourite sounds in the whole world.

“Well, she was one of the greatest people in the whole wide world.”

The girl smiles at this, revealing gaps where a couple of her front teeth once were. Patrick claps excitedly, beaming at his father.

He laughs at their expressions and motions for his daughter to come and sit beside him. Once Tallie has made the journey over to snuggle up against her father’s side, he continues. “I don’t talk about her a whole lot, do I?”

“No!” Tallie and Patrick exclaim in unison, the grins on their faces growing wider as they drag out the word.

“Do you wanna know everything about me and your mom?”

The children shriek in excitement, YES’s being shouted over and over until it doesn’t even sound like a word to Scott anymore.

“I loved your mom very much. I still do. And she loved you both a whole bunch. Maybe even more than she loved me.” He pokes both of the kids in their sides, making them squeal and squirm in a fit of laughter.

“Do you both know the ice rink I coach at? Where I take you to visit grandma sometimes?”

They nod enthusiastically in understanding.

“That’s where I met your mom. We were really, really little. Not too much older than you, Tallie.”

She laughs at this, and he ruffles the top of her hair.

He takes a deep breath in an attempt to smother the firey pain in his chest, the kind that comes about whenever he speaks about her.

In.

Out.

And then he begins.


End file.
